Return of Reckoning

I recently found this game and have never played Warhammer before, so I'm looking for some advice.

I've made a white lion character and got it to level 11, but I dont think I want to play this class because I'm not very good with the pet management thing.

What I want to do is be some form of melee dps, and was looking at Swordmaster.. But its class type is 'tank' so i guess thats out of the question.

Could anyone reccomend any melee dps classes that do their job well? Thanks!

Also - I've noticed that i level up very quickly by participating in the public quest zone things where you kill a bunch of things and then get a loot bag for doing so. Do i need to do the storyline quests or would I be fine by just leveling up through these public quests?

Any information is helpful

Marauder is currently a very solid dps class on destro if you don't want to play a WL (which is a very solid dps on order). As for lvling, you don't have to do any quests at all, but some of them (like epic quests) can get you big amounts of xp. Farming mobs is usually the simplest way sadly. Also, there is no story line in this game really, you make your own story

once you get the LoyalPet Addon, you can set your pet to always assist you, so pet management becomes a non-issue. WL and Mara are the current top 2 damage classes in game, so I'd recommend either of them. WL has insanely good burst damage, and their mobility is far above any other class (pounce, fetch, Charge)
You could go dpsing as a SM, but your dmg will be far behind that of a WL, unless you go full loldps mode, at which point you are still maybe 10-30% behind the damage that an average dps can do.